After the hours I spent on the Christmas crossword two weeks ago, this one came as welcome relief. Not that it was easy: Azed never is, for me at any rate, but this I found no harder than his usual plains.

This puzzle did not leave me very happy as I couldn’t see the word-play in 23Across and took ages to stumble on the conjointed INTO in 29Across. Not a very satisfactory state of affairs for a Sunday puzzle which should have broad appeal like the Observer’s Everyman and the Sunday Times Cryptic.